James groaned. “It’s too serious,” he said. “It’s not to be thought of really. It reminds me of terrible nights at school when I lay awake trying to understand eternity—complete negation—until I turned giddy with the immensity of dark nothingness.”
Our host laughed. “You were very positive just now,” he said. “But have you forgotten a wistful little trifle called ‘Old China?’”
“Or, more on your own lines,” said W., who hates actors and acting, “the ‘South-Sea House’ or the ‘Old Benchers’? I will grant you the perfection—there is no other word—of the full-lengths of Dicky Suett and Bannister and Bensley’s Malvolio. There is nothing like it—you are quite right. Not even Hazlitt comes near it. One can see oneself with a great effort doing something passably Hazlittian in dramatic criticism, if one were put to it; but Lamb, Lamb reconstructs life and dignifies and enriches it as he does so. That essay in my opinion is the justification of footlights, grease-paint and all the tawdry business. And yet,”—W.’s face glowed with his eloquence, as it always does sooner or later every evening—“and yet if I were restricted to one Elia essay—dreadful thought!—it would not be ‘The Old Actors’ that I should choose, but—I can’t help it—‘Captain Jackson.’ I know there are far more beautiful things in Elia; deeper, sweeter, rarer. But the Captain and I are such old friends that it comes to this, I couldn’t now do without him.”
“Of course,” cried H. “I had forgotten. You remind me of something I simply must keep—the Elliston.” He snatched the “Essays” from our host’s hands and read the following passage, while we all laughed—a double laughter—overtly with him, and covertly at him, for if there is one man living who might be the hero to-day of a similar story, it is H. himself, who has a capriciousness, an impulsiveness, a forgetfulness, and a grandiosity that are Ellistonian or nothing.
“‘Those who knew Elliston,’” he read, “‘will know the manner in which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had superadded a haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sorts of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing that for my own part I never ate but of one dish at dinner. “I too never eat but one thing at dinner,”—was his reply—then after a pause—“reckoning fish as nothing.” The manner was all. It was as if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the savoury esculents which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness, tempered with considerate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer.’”
“Well,” said our host, reclaiming the book, “my vote if I had one would be for ‘Mackery End in Hertfordshire’; and I make the declaration quite calmly, knowing that we are all safe to retain what we will. James will of course disagree with the choice; but then you see I am a sentimentalist, and when Lamb writes about his sister and his childhood I am lost. And ‘Mackery End’ delights me in two ways, for it not only has the wonderful picture of Bridget Elia in it, but we see Lamb also on one of his rapturous walks in his own county. I never see a field of wheat without recalling his phrase of Hertfordshire as ‘that fine corn country.’”
“All very well,” said James, “but if you talk like this how are you going to let ‘Dream Children’ go?”
“Ah, yes,” sighed our host, “‘Dream Children’—of course! How could I let that go? No, it’s too difficult.”
“What about this?” said the grave incisive voice of K., who had not yet spoken, and he began to read:—
“In proportion as the years both lessen, and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away ‘like a weaver’s shuttle.’ Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets.’